Aymara language

AYMARA, 2,000,000 SPEAKERS in Bolivia, and Peru
from the DICTIONARY OF LANGUAGES, The Definitive Reference to more than 400 Languages, by
Andrew Dalby,A & C Black , London
"One of the AMERIND LANGUAGES, Aymara is spoken on the high Andes plateaus near Lake Titicaca. Aymara shows many similarities with neighbouring Quechua. An argument continues as to whether the languages have the same origin, or have grown together in the course of shared cultural development. Hermann Steinthal, at the 8th International Congress of Americanists in Berlin in 1888, asserted the former. J. Alden Mason, in the Handbook of South American Indians, argued that in their basis the languages had `little in common' but that they shared a large number of words,`perhaps as much as a quarter of the whole, obviously related and probably borrowed'. Some modern researchers favour Steinthal, positing a `Quechumaran' grouping to include both Quechua and Aymara; the majority, probably, agree with Mason. At any rate, there certainly has been cultural influence between the two.A hundred years before the Spanish conquest, Aymara territory had become part of the Inca empire. The west Peruvian dialects of Quechua show strong Aymara influence, as if Aymara had once been spoken there. The Aymara language has a traditional form of picture writing, used until quite recently to produce versions of Christian religious texts. This seems to represent an early stage in the typical development of writing - an aid to the memory, used for fixed texts such as catechisms and the Lord's Prayer, in which the texts are at least half-remembered. In this picture writing the characters are not standardised or used in the same way in different places. There are often fewer signs than words: just enough to recollect to the user's mind what he needs to say. The majority of signs are pictures of people and things.Some others are symbolic, and the meaning of signs can bestretched by means of puns and homophones. Aymara in this traditional script was at first written on animal skins painted with plant or mineral pigments: later, paper was used. In modern Bolivia, where the largest community of speakers is to be found, Aymara is now written in the Latin alphabet. The orthography, introduced in 1983, follows Spanish practice. Books and magazines are regularly published, notably by the Evangelical and Catholic churches. Many Bolivians are trilingual in Aymara, Quechua and Spanish. Thus, besides its Quechua elements, Aymara has now many Spanish loan-words, though they are much altered to fit the sound pattern: winus tiyas for Spanish buenos dias, wisiklita for bicicleta. The first ten numerals in Aymara are:
maya, paya, kimsa, pusi, phisqa, suxta, paqallqu, kimsaqallqu, llatunka, tunka."

Rogue Waves

"The storm was nothing special. Its waves rocked the Norwegian Dawn just enough so that bartenders on the cruise ship turned to the usual palliative — free drinks.
Then, off the coast of Georgia, early on Saturday, April 16, 2005, a giant, seven-story wave appeared out of nowhere. It crashed into the bow, sent deck chairs flying, smashed windows, raced as high as the 10th deck, flooded 62 cabins, injured 4 passengers and sowed widespread fear and panic."
From
"Rogue Giants at Sea", by W.J. Broad
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/science/11wave.html?8dpc

More on rouge waves at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave

World Wide Words: Action at a distance

"It first appeared in English in the word telescope. This was a usage adapted from Galileo’s Italian word telescopi for his new device, which he seems to have first used in 1611; two years later, Kepler employed the modern Latin telescopium. Galileo and Kepler apparently tried out a series of other names before settling on telescope, including perspicillum, conspicillum, specillum, and penicillium; if they had decided to use one of the others, it is very possible that we should now not have all these words starting in tele–."

World Wide Words: Action at a distance

Recovering the raised fields - Peru

Google Maps give beautiful pictures of the Earth. We have seen and shown in several posts that the satellite eye is able to display in great detail the archaeological remains and ruins. Let me show you here three images of some raised fields near the Lake Titicaca. These waru-warus (raised fields in Aymara language) are near Caritamaya.

According to a private communication (ConNuestroPeru), the archaeologists

are recovering some waru-warus having circular and radial shapes.

In fact, several waru-warus create geoglyphs featuring animals. 

The "raised fields" are earthworks separated by canals. This is an ancient agricultural technique used by Andean people starting from the first millennium BC. Each raised field is approximately 10 meters large and more than one hundred long. 

More on waru-waru

 arXiv:1009.4602 [pdf] Geoglyphs of Titicaca as an ancient example of graphic design, Amelia Carolina Sparavigna

 arXiv:1009.2231 [pdf] Symbolic landforms created by ancient earthworks near Lake Titicaca, Amelia Carolina Sparavigna

Moth-Eye Structures for Broadband Antireflection

Appl. Phys. Express 3 (2010) 102602 (3 pages)  |Previous Article| |Next Article|  |Table of Contents|
|Full Text PDF: FREE (763K)|

Hybrid Moth-Eye Structures for Enhanced Broadband Antireflection Characteristics

Lanying Yang, Qin Feng, Binghao Ng, Xiangang Luo, and Minghui Hong

The authors are proposing hybrid moth-eye structures to have high antireflection propoerties. These structures can be applied to solar cells for high light -to-electricity cinversione efficiency

URL: http://apex.jsap.jp/link?APEX/3/102602/
DOI: 10.1143/APEX.3.102602

Moth eyes for solar cells

"Photovoltaics, which convert sunlight into electricity, have long been touted as one of the most promising solutions to our energy needs. Unfortunately, today's devices reflect a lot of solar energy as heat, which means that solar power is currently not as cheap as other forms of energy. Now, however, researchers in the Netherlands have developed an anti-reflective coating based on the nanostructure of a moth’s eyes, which could reduce the reflection from photovoltaic cells and thereby make them more efficient"

Moth eyes inspire more efficient solar cell - physicsworld.com

The trash vortex

"The trash vortex is an area the size of Texas in the North Pacific in which an estimated six kilos of plastic for every kilo of natural plankton, along with other slow degrading garbage, swirls slowly around like a clock, choked with dead fish, marine mammals, and birds who get snared. Some plastics in the gyre will not break down in the lifetimes of the grandchildren of the people who threw them away."
The trash vortex | Greenpeace International
"Il Pacific Trash Vortex, noto anche come Grande chiazza di immondizia del Pacifico (Great Pacific Garbage Patch), è un enorme accumulo di spazzatura galleggiante (composto soprattutto da plastica) situato nell'Oceano Pacifico, approssimativamente fra il 135º e il 155º meridiano Ovest e fra il 35º e il 42º parallelo Nord. La sua estensione non è nota con precisione: le stime vanno da 700.000 km² fino a più di 10 milioni di km² ... ovvero tra lo 0,41% e il 5,6% dell'Oceano Pacifico. ... L'accumulo si è formato a partire dagli anni cinquanta, a causa dell'azione della corrente oceanica chiamata Vortice subtropicale del Nord Pacifico (North Pacific Subtropical Gyre), dotata di un particolare movimento a spirale in senso orario, che permette ai rifiuti galleggianti di aggregarsi fra di loro.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Trash_Vortex

Cotton on World Wide Words

Interessante la discussion sul "cotton on".

World Wide Words E-magazine: 16 Apr 2011

Il termine "cotonato" lo usamo per i capelli, mentre in Inglese si parla di "big hair"

Dharmacakra

"The Dharmacakra symbol is represented as a chariot wheel (Sanskrit cakram) with eight or more spokes. It is one of the oldest known Buddhist symbols found in Indian art, appearing with the first surviving post-Harappan Indian iconography in the time of the Buddhist king Aśoka. The Dharmacakra has been used by all Buddhist nations as a symbol ever since. In its simplest form, the Dharmacakra is recognized globally as a symbol for Buddhism." According Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmacakra

Kongo Rikishi come Ercole

"Kongōrikishi are an interesting case of the possible transmission of the image of the Greek hero Heracles to East Asia along the Silk Road. Heracles was used in Greco-Buddhist art to represent Vajrapani, the protector of the Buddha, and his representation was then used in China and Japan to depict the protector gods of Buddhist temples. This transmission is part of the wider Greco-Buddhist syncretic phenomenon, where Buddhism interacted with the Hellenistic culture of Central Asia from the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD.*"
According to Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shukongoshin

* "The origin of the image of Vajrapani should be explained. This deity is the protector and guide of the Buddha Sakyamuni. His image was modeled after that of Hercules. (...) The Gandharan Vajrapani was transformed in Central Asia and China and afterwards transmitted to Japan, where it exerted stylistic influences on the wrestler-like statues of the Guardian Deities (Nio)." (Katsumi Tanabe, "Alexander the Great, East-West cultural contacts from Greece to Japan", p23)